Is it OK to ask whether a woman has kids?

People have made a claim in recent years that no one should ask a woman whether she has children, whether she's planning on having (more) children, and why (not). The claim is that having children is a personal issue which can be very upsetting for some women to talk about, whether they are being asked by strangers or close family members. Below I consider whether these claims are justified: is it really so bad to ask these questions?

Do you have kids?

For many years I couldn't imagine myself as a mother – nor indeed was I sure I wanted to become one. In my 20s, particularly after I'd been in a relationship for a few years, people would ask about whether I was planning on getting married, and whether I planned on having children. Although I found the questions a little tiresome, I gave my answer (‘no’ or ‘I don’t know’) and it was usually met with acceptance. Luckily for me I was surrounded by people who didn't pressure me or try to guilt me into following the conventional path of marriage and children. If I had been subjected to frequent questioning and pressure from my family, friends or even strangers, this could have been unbearable. So I can wholly understand why it is so annoying for people who are frequently on the receiving end of pressure to produce offspring.

During my childless years, strangers also occasionally asked me whether I had kids, and I didn't really mind this, it's a reasonable question to ask of a woman in her 20s or beyond. I wasn’t berated for being unmarried and childless, but I used to have to field the questions about why I didn’t have children, and those were more frustrating, as though I had to explain and justify why I hadn’t procreated yet. After all, parenting is (in many societies, at least) a lifestyle choice and not a moral requirement. So asking someone whether they are a mother seems permissible, but continuing to question them about why they are or aren’t a mother becomes something else. (Analogously, asking someone if they’re a vegetarian is reasonable, but asking “why are you vegetarian?” is infuriating. No one should have to justify their food intake any more than their procreation status, but that’s another post for another day). What we can avoid, and indeed should avoid, are the ‘why’ questions about someone is childless. When someone says they don't have any children, the whys and wherefores of their situation are no one’s business but their own. Asking whether they have children is engaging in small talk; asking why they don't have children is prying and pressuring.

Making connections 

People make connections with others by talking. It's how friendships build up, and conversations often make the day more pleasant and less boring. Generally, small talk focuses on elements of people's lives or the news – look at the weather, what's your job, where do you live, and suchlike. Asking someone whether they have children is in this category, it seems. As a mother, I know that talking about children to someone else who has children is a great way to find common ground and build a rapport. How else could I find out that we have this in common if I weren’t to ask them if they have kids? If someone asks another person whether they have kids and the answer is yes, this will probably be followed up with questions such as how many, boys or girls, how old are they, and so on. This is how people converse and make friends, and this should not be prevented.

There are of course some questions that are out of bounds for strangers to ask one another, for example about their sex lives, or their toileting habits. These are highly personal questions which would rightly be met with shock and condemnation if they were to be asked in most situations, but whether or not a person has children is not in this league. “Do you have any kids?” is much more similar to “What’s your job?” or “Do you have any pets?” than it is to “How often do you have sex?”

But childlessness can be a touchy subject. And there are many reasons why a woman might not have children. (The same is true of a man, but I don't think childless men are questioned and judged in quite the same way as a childless woman is: after all, a woman's sole function on earth is to raise children, right? (*sarcasm)) 

So, why doesn't S have children? Perhaps she doesn't have enough money to support a child; perhaps she is single and has no partner with whom to conceive a baby; perhaps she has chosen to focus on her career rather than motherhood; perhaps she is not attracted to men; perhaps she's planning on having children, but just not right now; or perhaps she simply does not like children and doesn't want to have any! These (and many others) are perfectly legitimate reasons for someone not to have a child. And it may well be the case that if these are the reasons someone doesn't have children they may feel comfortable saying these to family members or strangers. 

But there may also be people who would really like to have a child but for some reason they don't. For example, perhaps she or her partner may have a health condition which makes it difficult or impossible to conceive; perhaps she has been pregnant but suffered miscarriage or stillbirth; perhaps she had one or more children who have now died; perhaps she has gone through a divorce and not been given custody of her children; or perhaps her children have been taken into care because she was an inadequate parent. These are not likely to be topics of conversation which someone is happy to explain to strangers, and it is understandable why someone in one of these situations would hate being asked whether they have kids, and I have every sympathy for these people.

"I just get so upset when I think about the rain"

However, anything can be a touchy subject: any question which someone asks to another person in the process of small talk could potentially be upsetting. For example, suppose I strike up a conversation with a woman about the weather, complaining that it's raining again - this may seem to be an innocuous conversation starter, but she may find the conversation upsetting for some reason. For example, perhaps her partner is a meteorologist and she is just discovered he's been cheating; perhaps her daughter slipped when it was raining and fell under a bus and was killed; perhaps she is on the way to her sister's wedding and the rain is going to ruin the day; perhaps when it rains she is reminded of the time she was raped in the pouring rain; or perhaps she was talking about the rain when her mother had a stroke and has been institutionalised ever since. Any of these could be the case, and this could mean that my chatting about the rain upsets the person I'm talking to. However, the mere possibility that someone may be upset by talking about the rain should not preclude us from talking about the rain to anyone.

If mere chit chat about the rain could upset people, then it is easy to see how asking someone about their job, or whereabouts they live, or whether they have any pets, could be even more distressing topics of conversation, after all, they may have lost their job, or maybe they're about to have their home repossessed, or maybe their dog just mauled a child to death - who knows? The same can be said for asking them whether they have children. It might upset them, but given that most people are not upset or offended by being asked whether they have kids, it is reasonable to ask the question. I cannot allow the fact that someone might be upset by talking about children prevent me from asking them whether or not they have children. (As suggested above, interrogating them about why they don't have children is something quite different indeed. The why questions are just prying, and imply judgement too.)

The verdict

This hasn't been my most eloquent or philosophically flawless argument, but I think it is intuitively correct: we need to make a judgement about the chance that someone would be offended, versus the opportunity of building a rapport. "How often do you have anal sex?" is quite likely to offend, and minimally likely to build a rapport, whereas asking about the weather is very unlikely to offend, but doesn't build much of a rapport either. "Do you have kids?" is a reasonable way to build a rapport with someone, and although it carries the possibility of upsetting a minority of people, this should not preclude us from asking it - so long as we don't interrogate others about why they do or do not have kids.

Is it wrong to pierce a baby's ears?

In many cultures, it is common for parents to pierce the ears of newborn baby girls. This practice is very ethnocentric, meaning that it is commonplace in some cultures, and unheard of nd frowned upon in others. Some people  claim it is harmless, beautiful, and kinder than piercing the ears of an older child- and others claim it is cruel, sexist, and a violation of consent.

If you'd like to read a range of anecdotes and  viewpoints, see this Quora discussion. Below I examine a range of viewpoints and ultinately conclude that although it is a bodily violation and not medically necessary, it may be culturally necessary in some cultures to avoid bullying.

Wrongness

Many things are wrong. It's wrong to accept d a gift without saying thank you without taking a gift, and it's wrong to put millions of people to death because you don't like their skin colour. Both of these are wrong, but they are not equally wrong. Wrongness is a spectrum, and the above two acts are at opposite ends of the spectrum. If baby ear piercing turns out to be wrong, I'll need to say where on the spectrum it lies - just how wrong it is.

Wrongness comes in (at least) two forms: intrinsic wrongness and instrumental wrongness. If something is instrumentally wrong, it is wrong because of its negative consequences. If something is intrinsically wrong, it is wrong in itself, because of the type of act which it is - even if no negative consequences ensue. For example, we might think that dropping litter is instrumentally wrong because it harms the environment and disgusts people. On the other hand, we might think that lying in court is wrong in principle, regardless of the consequences. Of course, some acts may be both intrinsically and instrumentally wrong. Murder is probably wrong in both ways: it is instrumentally qrong because it upsets people, and intrinsically wrong because it's simply wrong to take a life. I'll show below that altbough baby ear piercing is intrinsically wrong (by a very small degree) it may be instrumentally right in some cultures.

Arguments in favour

First, I'll consider arguments in favour of piercing babies' ears. These are:

1. Babies feel less pain
2. Babies don't mess with their earrings
3. It looks cute
4. Most girls love their earrings
5. The holes stay open for life
6. It helps tell girls apart from boys

Babies feel less pain

The first argument in favour of piercing babies' ears is that babies feel less pain, or that they quickly forget about the pain. As for the first claim, here's a little experiment you can do: lay down a newborn baby next to a child, and an adult. Now, get an object such as a pencil case or water bottle, drop it onto each of them, and see who cries. My guess is that the baby would cry, while the others would not. Indeed, if one were to try a more unpleasant (and possibly illegal) experiment of hitting the people, I think the baby would certainly cry, the child may cry, and the adult would not. So the claim that babies don't feel the pain is totally unfounded.

As for the claim that babies don't remember the pain, this is more plausible. If we had hit the newborn, the child, and the adult, it is likely that 5 minutes after the hitting, the child and the adult would both remember that they'd been hit. Would a newborn baby remember it? There's no way to know. She might not behave like she recalls the pain, but that doesn't mean that the pain has indeed been forgotten. 

If it is true that babies forget the pain whereas children and adults do not, then it would seem to be more permissible to hit a baby for fun, than to hit a child or adult for fun. This seems intuitively distasteful. But this doesn't mean it is wrong, of course. There is not a clear way to ascertain whether babies remember the pain.

Babies don't mess with their earrings

It is important to keep newly-pierced ears clean; that much is certain. Adults with newly-pierced ears are good at keeping them clean, but children (aged 2-10) are likely to mess with their earrings with germy hands, possibly causing infections. Very young babies are not able to control their limbs properly, and couldn't fiddle with their earrings even if they wanted to, so their new piercings are likely to stay cleaner than those done on an older child.

But that alone isn't reason enough to pierce their ears. Amputation of the legs is likely to heal better (and be coped with more easily) when performed on a newborn rather than an older child or adult -- but that alone is not reason enough to amputate a baby's legs! We'd need to have some other (positive) reason to pierce a baby's ears or amputate their legs in addition to babies' advanced healing abilities.

It looks cute

I can understand why people think it looks cute, but I myself do not find it cute. It's not commonplace in the UK to pierce babies' ears, and yet we still have babies and children which are very cute. 

Besides, many things might be cute - surgically grafting cat ears onto a baby's head, or tattooing little hearts onto their bodies, but this does not give us adequate reason to do it. Later on, when I discuss consent, we will see that cuteness is insignificant when weighed against body modification.

Most girls love their earrings

This is probably true. Most girls like to look girly, and the chance to wear sparkly earrings like a princess is undoubtedly attractive to many girls.

But not all girls. Some girls don't want to wear earrings, but by the time they are old enough to object to their earrings, they have already had their ears pierced.

But for girls who don't want to wear earrings, they can just take them out, and the scarring is minimal. So ear piercing on a baby isn't like tattooing a baby, where it is significantly more difficult to reverse the procedure if they don't like it.

The holes stay open for life

Oddly, this is often given as a reason in favour of baby ear piercing. People say things such as "I haven't worn earrings in 10 years, but the holes are still there so I can put earrings in if I want to". This contradicts the above argument - that one can just take out the earrings if one doesn't want them. But the fact that the holes stay there for life is surely a reason to say that baby ear piercing is a lifelong infliction - a reason against it. And yet, proponents of babies with earrings use "the holes never heal up" as an argument in favour of ear piercing in newborns. Counterintuitive, huh?

It helps tell girls apart from boys

Among cultures where baby ear piercing is commonplace (such as Spain and other Latino cultures), this argument is frequently put forward, but it is utterly flawed.

First of all, why is it essential for people to know the sex of a baby? They should act the same way towards the baby regardless of its genital configuration or whether it has small pieces of metal in its ears. Perhaps they just want to know which pronouns to use, so they can say "She's gorgeous" or "He's gorgeous" rather than "It's gorgeous". Fair enough, but there are many cultures where baby girls' ears are not routinely pierced - how do they cope with telling baby boys apart from baby girls?

The answer is this: they dress their babies in gendered clothes such as pink flowery dresses or blue dungarees. Or, if one encounters a baby dressed in unisex clothing, one asks "is it a boy or a girl?", and no one takes offence. 

So this argument - the aid to telling boys from girls - is absurd. One doesn't need to tell a baby boy from a baby girl, but even if they do, they can look at the clothes or just ask - piercings are unnecessary for this purpose.

It's tradition 

This is probably one of the weakest arguments in favour of baby ear piercing. There are many abhorrent traditions involving the ritual alteration or mutilation of people's bodies. Some examples include Chinese foot binding, head binding, female genital mutilation, circumcision, tribal tattoos, and the stretching of the neck.

A tradition is only a tradition as long as people keep practicing it. If a tradition is cruel, outdated, unwarranted, or just plain stupid, then there is no need to keep following it. There is a saying: Who is the greater fool: the fool, or the fool who follows him? It suggests that copying stupid actions is even more stupid than the person who did it in the first place. The practice of foot binding (for girls) in China had been a tradition for a long time, but thankfully, people stopped practicing it, and it is now seen as the vile and unnecessary practice it truly is.

So piercing babies' ears solely because it is a tradition is absurd. We would need a better reason than mere tradition for piercing babies' ears.

Arguments against 

Now let's consider some of the arguments against baby ear piercing. These are:

1. It's dangerous
2. It's sexist
3. It's body mutilation
4. It requires consent

It's dangerous

Earrings can be grabbed and yanked out by the baby themselves, or by other children. They can get caught when removing clothing, or when playing, hugging etc. and when this happens, it hurts. But in the UK, quite a few kids (again, mainly girls) have their ears pierced, and almost all women do. How many people have had an earring ripped out such that their earlobe was actually torn? I would say the number is minuscule. Ear piercing is not dangerous.

It's sexist

Recall the argument above in favour of piercing girls' ears because "it's cute". Why is it only cute for girls and not for boys? The answer, of course, is because we have gendered ideas about what is attractive for boys and girls.

When people pierce a baby's ears, it is always baby girls whose ears are pierced. Very occasionally, one might pierce a single ear of a baby boy, but this is much less common than piercing both ears of a baby girl.

And the reason why it's girls rather than boys who have their ears pierced is undoubtedly because women wear earrings to look beautiful, like princesses and so on. So piercing the ears of a baby girl is a symbolic act which says "I want my daughter to look beautiful". This is highly distasteful, the reinforcement of the idea that girls should look beautiful, with sparkly jewellery, whereas boys should not.

This ethos is unpleasant enough when it circulates among adults, but it becomes more and more grotesque when inflicted on young children and babies. Does a 5 year old need to look beautiful? Of course not, so a new born baby girl certainly does not.

On the other hand, gendered clothes exist for children of all ages, including newborns. If we object to ear piercing among baby girls solely on sexist grounds, we should also object to gendered clothing. It should either be abolished, or it should be acceptable to dress a baby boy in a flowery dress. But many people against ear piercing still think that gendered clothing is acceptable, so sexism alone can't explain the wrongness of ear piercing.

It's body mutilation

Forcing pieces of metal through a child's skin is a form of body mutilation, as is tattooing, circumcision, female genital mutilation, foot binding, and several other (once) common practices. If we object to ear piercing, but not another form of body mutilation, we would have to show that ear piercing is more harmful or less necessary than the one which we accept.

Let's take circumcision, since it is shockingly common. Figures show that over 80% of US males are circumcised, and over 90% of males in Muslim-majority countries. I find this abhorrent and shocking; in the UK, only 4% of males are circumcised, and I can't fathom why anyone would do it to a baby. Given that there is no good medical reason for routine circumcision on babies, I find it sickening and intrinsically wrong that someone would remove part of the genitals of a newborn baby. Of course, people often claim that it's more hygienic (which it isn't), but mostly that it's a tradition - often underpinned by religion. As shown above, tradition alone is no good reason to alter the bodies of babies.

Anyway, since the removal of part of the genitals is far more intimate, invasive, and irreversible than the piercing of the earlobes, it is impossible for anyone to seriously claim that routine circumcision is acceptable but ear piercing is wrong.

Of course, someone might claim that both are wrong, because both are mutilation. This seems true, as they both irreversibly alter the baby's body. However, it is possible to remove earrings, and the remaining ear is very similar to an unpierced ear (there may be a small pinprick still visible). Compare this to circumcision, which irreversibly alters a boy's penis - if a circumcised boy decides he doesn't want to be circumcised, tough, he cannot reverse it, whereas removing earrings will give the person an almost identical ear to an unpierced one. Moreover, when one considers that a man will use his penis for urinating, making love, and masturbating, but a girl will use her earlobes for absolutely nothing, this further shows why ear piercing is far, far less harmful and less invasive than circumcision is.

It requires consent

This is related to the above argument. The suggestion is that body modification is something which morally requires consent, and a child - much less a newborn baby - is unable to consent. Some people even suggest that any touching of the body requires consent. 

This latter claim is reasonable for adults and older children, but is absurd with regards to nonverbal babies and perhaps even all children under 10. Babies and young children need to bathed, dressed, and to have their toileting needs met, but I cannot obtain consent to change my new born baby's nappy - I just change it. The fact that she cannot talk does not seem to be an issue - few if any people claim that I am violating the bodily integrity of my new born by changing her nappy without first obtaining her consent.

Sometimes young children who can speak say they don't want to have a bath or to have their nappy changed, but their wishes should not universally be respected, or they'd be living in filth, which is not in their best interests. Sometimes children's lack of consent should be ignored for their greater good.

This argument works for nappy-changing, but not quite so much for ear piercing, unless we could show that a child's wellbeing would be severely limited as a result of failing to pierce her ears. In somewhere such as the UK, it seems evident that young girls with pierced ears have a childhood indistinct from young girls with unpierced ears. But elsewhere, things may be different.

Recall above that ear piercing is, in Spanish and Latino cultures, used as a shorthand for telling the sexes apart: girls have pierced ears, boys do not. This means that a girl with unpierced ears may be met with confusion or unkind comments, in the same way that a boy who wears dresses may be treated in the UK. This could mean that a girl with unpierced ears could be an easy target for bullies, and this would limit her wellbeing. This alone might be incentive enough to pierce a baby girl's ears.

I said above that traditions are only traditions as long as they keep being practiced, and that is true, but the first few people who break with a tradition may have to be remarkably thick-skinned. Children can be remarkably cruel, and the sphere of gender roles is somewhere that children can bully one another mercilessly. A child who doesn't conform to gender expectations can be an easy target.

A parent might think that baby ear piercing is a silly tradition and that it's unnecessary, but go through with it nonetheless to spare their daughter the burden of being different. If one lives in a Spanish or Latino culture, then failing to pierce a baby girl's ears may be setting her up for a difficult childhood.

Conclusion 

Piercing the ears of a baby girl is invasive and unnecessary. It will be painful to the baby, but she will probably forget about the pain soon after, and the piercings will heal cleanly if the ears are pierced when she is young. It is reasonably non-permanent, and girls who later decide not to wear earrings can remove them and almost no scar is left.

Generally, people should have autonomy over their own bodies, and consent should be obtained prior to invasive procedures or body modification. Ear piercing is a slightly intrusive and momentarily painful procedure, so requires consent (circumcision definitely requires consent). However, we often think it acceptable to give a baby a painful inoculation in spite of the pain or her lack of consent, because we believe it is medically necessary. 

Pierced ears are obviously not medically necessary, and since it is painful and a form of body modification, we can say that it is wrong. It is intrinsically wrong to unnecessarily modify someone's body without their consent, even if no harm ensues. But how wrong is it on the spectrum if wrongness? I believe it is at the end of the spectrum, right next to going to a birthday party without a present. Although I maintain that it is intrinsically wrong to pierce a baby girl's ears, it is only a tiny crumb of wrongness.

It is intrinsically wrong, but, I maintain, it may be instrumentally right, because although it isn't medically necessary, it may be culturally necessary. In the UK it is seen as trashy and oversexualised for a little girl to have pierced ears, so it is certainly not a cultural requirement here. But some places have girls' earrings so ingrained in their culture that having a little girl with unpierced ears is like putting a boy in a pink dress with a bow in his hair. It could be seen as cruel to treat a child in such a way, because it invites confusion and unkind comments from others. So in cultures where it is commonplace for all young girls have pierced ears, it might be best to safeguard girls from bullies by piercing their ears - and probably the best time to pierce them is in the first few months of life, when they heal cleanly.